


Let's keep it secret.

by Royalrastafariannaynays



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Invasion, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Apocalypse, Dom/sub, Enthusiastic Consent, Everyone Is An Adult, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, POV Second Person, Secret Relationship, Sub Dave, Subspace, Threshecutioner Karkat, Tragic Romance, Trolls on Earth, Xeno, alpha dave strider is a revolutionary, or rather, pay attention to that one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 00:22:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10933083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Royalrastafariannaynays/pseuds/Royalrastafariannaynays
Summary: As part of her latest fling with conquering unnecessary galaxies, Her Imperial Condescension set her sights on a little blue planet.Its inhabitants called it Earth.Karkat Vantas, an up-and-coming Threshecutioner, thought the name at first glance was stupid. The inhabitants were weak, soft, scared, and perfectly kill-able, just like himself before molt. Humans. Another stupid name. He was assigned for invasion, and was all too ready to get out of his current station and to a place where he could be more invisible to the higher-ups.And then, half a sweep into his new position, he met a Human with magnetic fingertips and a soul you just can't put down.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> much thanks to my beta for this, SadVegeta! <3

It… hurts.

Everything hurts.

“Have we learned?”

Your wrists are alight with pain. They come to your consciousness as two pinpoints of heat so great it might as well be ice. Bright spot lamps flash pure daylight on your eyelids. You blink open your eyes, and that hurts too. Surroundings dance in a strobe across your line of sight, and you’re nearly blinded.

Looking up, you see that you’re shackled. Oh. There’s that pain. Your wrists are mangled and broken, your exoskeleton rent to shreds in the burning metal. The shackles are attached to… something. A pole.

A thick pole.

It has… a crossbar?

A stockade?

“Has the mutant learned his lesson?”

The voice sounds like it’s coming through water.

You breathe something back into your nose. It’s acrid, sweet, coppery. Blood.

You find yourself coughing violently, pain pulsing through your entire upper body with each heave. A wet chunk flies from your lips.

When you sniff, you smell something else.

It smells awful.

You look down.

There’s a burning pile of _something_ smoldering next to you.

A spotlight shines a glare into your eyes, and you’re coughing again.

The voice is shouting something.

At you?

It hurts.

Everything hurts.

A mouth moves.

_“Karkat.”_

 

* * *

 

Some poor soul has alcohol poisoning near the door. A troll, like you. Didn’t know her limits, probably.

Your dusty black combat boots clomp on the floor as you make your way to the bar.

Different bartender again tonight, but she still recognizes you.

Places like this are taboo.

 

 

_“Trolls and humans aren’t meant to interact.”_

 

 

Cross-species dance clubs are rare, and you’ve stormed a few under orders in different cities. This one keeps moving locations. You keep track of it. Everyone does, and it’s a wonder it doesn’t get raided.

Even soldiers have to have their fix, right?

You see _him_ , then. Also at the bar.

Several people down the way, nook-deep in some kind of fizzing drink you don’t like the smell of.

A troll tries to get your attention from your other side, and you brush them off. He’s taller than you by two feet, and a little persistent. Cerulean. This always happens, and they always go away when you fail to be interested.

The Human’s got a friend tonight, it seems, but he’s had friends with him before. They always melt into the smoke and debris before you can ask to get him alone.

 

 

_“It’s disgusting. They’re weak. Inferior.”_

 

 

The club is dirty, dark, full of rebels and soldiers and civilians alike.

It’s the only place where you can _forget_.

The Human, after a while, finally looks up.

He catches your eye and jerks his chin.

You push away from the bar, head toward the writhing mass. The buzzing of a few shameless concupiscent troll calls is loud, echoes over the dancing bodies and makes your skin feel prickly.

Before you even find the middle of the floor, a familiar body presses up against you.

 

 

_”They were **made** to be conquered.”_

 

 

This time, it’s underground. The poor and revolutionaries having a night of fun to forget the near constant turmoil and strife. Neither you nor your dance partner really want to be here. And you’re pretty sure neither of you knew how to dance before you started meeting like this.

But you’re dancing anyway, and there’s sweat and gasping mouths framing mouths; it’s hot in the middle of the drowsy and drugged crowd of disenfranchised ten-sweeps-somethings looking for a night without all the stress.

Drugs, and haze.

Musk and soft skin under claws.

Bright violet and sallow, sickly yellow light.

How many times has it been, now?

The bodies, the heat, the pale dim air in the underground.

He’s cozied up nice and close to you. His hips fit so nicely into yours. Humans are so fragile.

After a few songs, you stop dancing.

Fingers better suited for a piano than a gun wrap around your wrist. An eager and hungry grin says a few words you can’t hear. You’re led out.

Every time, you go to a different motel. Every time, you accept it without question.

Every time, you leave, and he can’t even be bothered to pretend to sleep. To take the edge off of what you both know this is.

 

* * *

 

“Let’s make it fast tonight,” you tell him, once you get to the motel. There’s a piece of paper stuck to your boot from the trash heap in the parking lot. You see it rip halfway down as you move, taking off your jacket and throwing it over a chair.

“I live in these hovels. Don’t ask. Remember?” the Human asks, peeling off his own overshirt.

He didn’t answer you. Not even close. His skin is the warm color of the dark sepia sand of the human desert, his hair yellow like the sun. Out of all the humans, pale as cream or dark as wet earth, you find this one the most appealing.

The neon lights of the motel flash off his reflective lenses as his head turns.

“I didn’t ask,” you remind him. You catch your scowling reflection on his eyewear.

“Besides,” you add, as you walk into the room close behind him, “The only important thing in here is the bed. Right?”

The Human shudders, eyes going half-lidded as you push him up against the back of the door.

You’re small for a troll, but you’re at least half a foot taller and much stockier than this alien. His slender limbs and fingers are graceful, his hips jut out, and the easy way he bares his neck is just the most piteous thing you’ve ever seen.

It makes your fangs bare, beast-like, as you absorb his heat.

Like instinct, his legs wrap around your waist, and you hoist them up, claws pressing divots into his skin. He pulls your hair, fingertips like wrigglers’ dull claws on your scalp, gasping as you snarl against the soft vulnerability of his throat.

As you bury your face in his neck, breathing in his scent that you know so well by now, you try not to think. You always try not to think.

You’re both in this for different reasons. You’re also both in it for the same one. The allure in doing this - so forbidden - trusting the other to keep quiet and keep it safe. You needed someone to surrender to you, and he does it by chance. He wants someone to give all his trust to, and you let him. You take it and cradle it against your heart.

All of his frail newborn trust.

The first time was a coincidence, a fluke.

The second time, it was too deep to swim out.

The Human tries to pull your face up, and you let him. He kisses you, all desperation and credence, and you pull his lip with your too-sharp teeth.

He throws his chin back, and his shades slip down on his face.

You push them back up for him.

You both know that you’re part of the Threshecutioner corps.

You both know the Human is part of the resistance.

You both had an inkling when you first met, in that same club.

The second time, it was on a street.

Amidst a riot.

Your eyes locked, and you both knew.

Wind blew his hair, and the sun-yellow made a halo in a sea of strife and revolt. You stared from what you knew must be an impenetrable visage of black and yellow eyes.

You both knew.

You felt the defiance in the Human’s shielded gaze. You felt it, and felt it challenge you. You saw the frail human, and saw how breakable he was. Weak bones, weak skin. The only thing they have over trolls is their strong will and social structure. And recoverability. They live through anything.

The Human in your arms muffles a moan against your mouth as he tightens his legs around your waist. He tries to growl, and it’s such a shitty imitation of a challenge that you just have to growl back.

He takes his ridiculous sunglasses, drops them on the floor by your feet. And glowers at you.

It’s the extra defiance of it that makes you kiss him back with more ferocity than before. Crushing his mouth, taking his breath away.

The Human is smiling when you pull away, glazed in the eyes and a little delirious with the moment.

You snort.

He yelps as you grip him by the thighs and quickly turn, dropping him on the bed before he has enough time to protest.

It’s never truly black with him, but you keep telling yourself that it is.

The only way you can justify how you can keep fucking him is if it’s black. A contest, a battle.

A duel.

It’s not really very black when you take his wrists, pinning them to the sheets and covering his body with your own. It’s not really very black when you press him down into the mattress, letting him writhe against you because you know he likes it. It’s not really black when you force him to kiss you slowly and with feeling, this time more tongue than teeth.

It’s not really anything at all.

He moans, sliding his knees up around your hips again, using them as leverage to get himself some friction.

Oh?

With a very intentional and put-upon sigh, you slip your hands down to his waist. He makes an eager noise, and cants himself up toward your fingers.

“Not yet,” you tell him, and proceed to shove his tee shirt all the way up to his lanky forearms.

When he gets what you’re doing, his struggles increase.

So does his moaning.

His eyes glaze even more, and his body bows against your stomach, and his chest and cheeks flush a pleasant red.

Your bulge pulses and your nook throbs in tandem.

“You like that?” you ask.

He nods, very easily, and you cinch his shirt into a vice around his hands. Not too tight, but tight enough to keep him from pulling free.

And your other hand goes to pin his hips to the bed.

The Human whines at that. He plays at gnashing his teeth, and whines some more, and your bloodpusher nearly leaps out of your chest.

“Please,” he requests, and you’ve got the script down already.

“No,” you reply, and he pulls at his arms, gasps, blush blooming on his cheeks. His legs are at your sides, now, knees spread wide and welcoming. You feel something twitch against the base of your palm. It’s what he calls his ‘dick’, you know that by now.

You wait until he stops trying to pull free, and lays supine beneath you. Panting, chest moving erratically, but still.

“Will you stay put if I take away my hand?” you ask, and he nods.

You stare into his leaden eyes as you remove the hand at his waist, and the Human remains where he is. There’s a twitch, but not much else.

“Good,” you hum for him.

And you use the hand to pull down the zipper of your own pants. Fatigues, as it were.

It’s obvious that he recognizes the sound, as you witness a struggle take place within him, and he’s forcing himself not to budge. But he moans for you. Oh, and he whines again.

He makes another noise that sounds like ‘please’ and you choose to ignore it. You have a signal for if shit gets bad. And ‘please’ isn’t it.

You remove your pants to your thighs, with your undergarments. It took a lot of practice to get good at doing it one-handed, but some things are necessary for convenience. And once they’re out of the way enough, you walk on your knees to position yourself over the Human’s clothed erection.

Oh good. You’re already wet.

He whines the loudest and most obnoxious one yet as you lower your body and grind your sopping nook against his bulge.

“You can move, now,” you tell him, and once more he starts to thrash.

The Human absolutely squirms, arching back and gasping into your breaths as you kiss him. His member slides easily between your folds, making you dizzy even with the fabric in between, and he begs you again.

“Please,” he breathes, this time, less a plea and more a chant to you, his fucking god.

You respond by driving your hips forward more determinedly, grinning as he ruts himself back up into your heat as a response.

He looses a high cry, begs you again.

So quick with the begging tonight.

But then, he loves to beg.

He knows he’ll be rewarded eventually.

“What a pathetic being,” you tell him, in such a gentle tone you worry you might evaporate into the air.

The Human ruts up, using his heels for leverage, you plunge your tongue into his mouth, and he sucks it in.

Several inches of your bulge unsheathe at once.

It immediately searches for something. A hole, a hand, something to wrap around.

The Human feels the prodding and makes some kind of vaguely satisfied noise, something with victory wound into its seams.

You decide he’s waited long enough, and pull yourself back. He groans from the loss of the slick heat, groans from the cooler air hitting the wet on his underwear, and then groans some more as you peel away the fabric over his lower half.

“So weak,” you coo, “So needy, aren’t you?”

“Yes, please,” he says, and you hum, reconnecting your mouths.

Your bulge wraps around his dick, and he moans again. A rush of lightning heat flashes into your scalp from your toes.

This is it, for tonight. You don’t have as much time as you usually do. There’s a patrol you’re expected on in the wee hours of the morning. You won’t sleep. That’s okay.

He moves his legs to fit around you once more, and you let him.

You undulate, you fit into him, you fuck your tongue into his mouth, and he opens himself to you.

It’s frightened, it’s sacred, it’s dangerous and it’s so painfully intimate.

Your black fingers spread against his soft earthling skin, and he trusts you with that.

You shake your head, trying to rid yourself of the painfully flushed feelings.

You snarl into his mouth.

He chokes and gasps, shuddering to a stop around you.

Almost like a surprise, you follow him over that edge. One hell of a fucking mess.

Literally a fucking mess.

Luckily most of it’s in your pants, and you have a fresh uniform waiting for you at the barracks. And thank the Condesce that your ejaculate looks like rust with your pills.

He goes limp below you, eyes not yet out of their glaze.

You get up, remove yourself from around him.

Today you won’t stay.

You know he likes you to stay.

But you can’t.

“Take a hot shower,” you tell him. He murmurs something into the pillow, and waves toward the door. Some kind of half-assed attempt at care on your part, and a half-assed attempt at goodbye on his.

Your body aches to go back, even while you’re zipping up. And you want to, you want to fold yourself over him, want to nurse him back to consciousness.

You always want to nurse him back.

It would be so easy.

You have to shake your head again.

Don’t even know his name.

Close the door.

It won’t grow to be anything more than it is.

You’ll make sure of that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a good half of this chapter is nsfw after the first page break, jic u dont wanna read it

The humidity of the shitty little dying planet chokes you as you step out of the motel room. No one in sight. And even if they were in sight, they wouldn’t say anything. The bands of color on your arm assure your safety from humans and lower ranks.

You huff on dust, coughing twice before inhaling deeply.

You fantasize about helping re-terraform this world, imagining a convoluted scenario in which peace is met, and you maybe could live here instead of going up on that ship to leave.

The toe of your right boot catches on a rock in the dirt, and it putters across the parking lot as you start to walk.

On your way back to the barracks, you remember.

 

* * *

 

You saw each other across the club on multiple occasions. There was some kind of magnetism that’s only seen in films. Too good of a rush to feel real. Like you’d done it before, many times. Like it was familiar. Like you knew him.

Like it was meant to be.

A part of you felt like you knew this Human, among all the others.

Why?

It made you skeptical, made you wary.

But it attracted you.

Made you feel hungry.

Hungry for company, contact, presence.

That visceral _need_ pulsated out into your fingertips, made you want him.

So much guilt poured from your heart at wanting him. You’ve killed his kind, why should he even give you a moment of his time?

One night, you talked and shared things; you shared distaste for the empire and bitterness at a tough life. He told you about his childhood, running from a psychotic parent even before the invasion. You told him about your youth, hiding from the drones indoors for hours and pretending to not exist. Mentioned you were hiding from the law, despite your job. He mentioned he was also hiding from the law, and you left it there.

He flirted both black and red with you. Told you he could beat you in a fight, if weapons were allowed. Told you that you look attractive, and a little vulnerable, a little scared, pitiably tired from your life. Told you that despite a good fight, he loves to surrender.

He winked.

There was a moment where you feared, where you had an attack in your bloodpusher that someone _knew_ about your quadrant blurring issues. A human, no less, in a position to expose you as both an enemy and a lawbreaker in this small world. But he smirked, a little, and you found him uh, what’s the Human saying? ‘Pulling your leg.’ It infuriated and fascinated you. It made you flash your fangs at him and make a dark proposition.

In return, he flashed a knife from his belt, gave you a look, and then peeled off into the pulsing mass.

The knife had blue stains on it.

You know what those were.

Tit for tat, then. It didn’t make you feel any less guilty to want him. It didn’t make what either of you had done okay.

But it burned, and you succumbed.

The next time you saw him, he snuck you into a back alley and took your mouth with his. There wasn’t a question.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s a motel room he takes you too, some place with maybe eighteen customers a night and no repeats if they can help it. A few dinged cruisers in the car park and the windows fogged and yellow from dirt.

The Human is panting, shirt torn to shreds.

His skin is so clean, so lovely.

You’re standing across the room from each other, and he looks just about ready to bolt. You’re both ready to bolt.

Ready to flee if something goes wrong. Ready to run if either of you attacks. Ready to escape if you’re found out.

Now, you’re here, and he’s looking like he’s regretting the whole shebang.

“Have you ever been with a troll?” you ask him. You’ve never been with one of his kind, but you know what they’re about. It’s part of your training in the corps, knowing their anatomy and how they work.

You advance on him, slowly, barefoot.

Your shoes lie clumsily next to his at the door.

“Yes,” he replies, a little uncertain of you. But he’s certain of his answer.

You were blinded before you got to this room, blind to circumstance and consequence.

And you’re still blind.

You corner him against the wall, dropping your uniform shirt by your feet, and the Human straightens his shades on his face.

“That was my favorite shirt, you cuntrag,” he tries to snarl at you. His face is flushed, there’s a tent in his jeans, and you’re not worried about anger.

“Okay,” you say, and frame his waist with your claws. “So no ripping your clothes. Got it. We have that signal we agreed on for red alert. Anything else?”

The Human looks just about fit to swoon, his hands trembling as they move to clutch at your upper arms.

“No permanent marks,” he breathes, against your mouth. “No permanent marks and we agree not to know who we are to each other.”

An odd request.

“Why?” you ask, fingertips creeping up under what’s left of his shirt.

“It’d fucking _ruin it_ ,” the Human gasps, with feeling, as your touches pass over a pert nub.

The next thing you say is instinctual. It’s a promise, a prayer, and you have no idea what to do with it.

“I won’t hurt you,” you whisper.

And the man in your arms just melts.

As you’re ripping his shirt apart the rest of the way, just so that it’s easier to remove, he casts his arms around your neck and sighs.

“Please hurt me,” he says, right in the hollow of your ear.

His voice is so small and wobbly, so free of the clicks and echoes of the trolls that surround you on a day to day basis. So clear and yet somehow muffled by the shape of his vocal struts and.

You vacillate so quickly it makes you shake until you tamp it right down.

You don’t kiss him.

Not yet.

You grip him by the thighs and hoist him up against you. His legs fall into place easily as he goes with what you want.

A rush comes from nowhere, flooding your senses and giving you a burst of energy that takes you both over to the bed in the room. It’s a short few steps, and then you’re draping his limp form over the rumpled motel covers.

The light is dim, but his hands still cast a shadow as he pulls them from around your neck to sling over his head on the bedspread. The Human is supine, prone, exposed. All of his vital organs would be _so easy_ to reach. All of his skin would be so easy to pierce. His heart, bared and open for the taking and his chin held aloft, throat vulnerable to searching teeth.

The rush comes again, and your bulge twitches in your sheath.

You take his sunglasses from his eyes, toss them on the bed a couple feet away.

You look at his eyes, heavy and half-lidded in his expression. They’re pointed at you, but blurred like he’s in a completely different reality.

He murmurs something.

“What?” you ask him, crawling to situate between his legs. The Human sighs, and easily fits his knees back around your waist.

He murmurs again, fingers jerking as if from a dream. Head lolling to the side on the blankets. Breaths coming long and gentle.

“I still didn’t hear you,” you tell him, claws fitting about the narrow hips.

“Thank you,” he says, seemingly apropos of nothing.

And that rush comes a third time.

You find yourself chattering a very pale call at him from inside your throat. He groans back at you.

Pausing, you thumb his waist. Not even bothering to think about your vocalizations right now. The focus is him. For whatever reason.

What have you gotten into, this time around?

He sighs as you touch him, body arching up and rolling the tent in his pants against your abdomen. The pressure seems to get him something, but clearly not enough, judging by the face he makes. He’s acting out, making senseless actions.

How much this Human seems to be trusting you hits you like a truck.

 

 

 

… how far would he let you go?

He said to hurt him. But no permanent marks. Not even temporary marks, probably.

Your palm slides up his belly, gliding across the soft fat and relaxed muscle of his torso. The flat plane of his sternum is hard under your hand, and you feel his heartbeat through his skin.

The fine hairs on his Human skin graze the vulnerability of the inside of your wrist.

Experimentally, you set your fingertips down in the center of his chest. Right in the valley of his pectoral muscles.

You press in just enough, and drag down.

The Human gasps, jolts up against you with surprise at the sudden sensation.

Your claws don’t even touch his skin, just the pressure of your fingertips alone making him do this.

The rush you’ve become familiar with by now turns into a legitimate feeling, and you can feel your chest consume with the desire for more, the desire for this power to be here always.

And he’s letting you. He says nothing against it.

He flinches a little when you draw your fingertips back up to where you started.

And you repeat the action. A little more pressure this time. A little of the half-blunted tip of your claw.

He groans, this time, says an almost inaudible “please,” grinds his hips again.

You grip them with your free hand pressing down on his pelvis, and he whines out a breath.

You repeat the action.

More pressure, the skin turning white and then pink under your ministrations.

The wince on his face tells you it hurts.

But the smile between strokes shows you just what kind of agony it is for him.

He utters “please” again, louder this time. More eager. Still a whisper.

His eyes are closed, and you let your hand hover over his chest, let him wait. You draw out the silence, counting his panting breaths, watching this beat of his heart in his throat.

You do a third pass, and a fourth.

A longer wait between each one.

By the fourth, there’s a clear wet spot forming on the front of his trousers, the button partway undone from his fidgeting and his heels digging into your back. His bony feet would be painful if you were one of his kind.

The Human starts to flinch with every touch, but then arches his body up for more, more, “please,” he says. A mantra, a chant.

A benediction.

You continue to press and scratch and test him. Push his limit, see how far that limit sits from where you are.

Right down over his sternum, over the bone that hides his heart from you.

He doesn’t stop you, and his body coils and coils like a tensed spring or a taut wire. His thighs pulse around your waist as he flexes, straining to give himself some pressure. His hands grip themselves above his crown, and crescent-shaped marks form in the insides of his palms.

He’s so well behaved. Not even moving his hands, all this time.

And when you have a nice set of red streaks down the middle of his stomach, you cease.

You sit back, resettling your claws on his waist, and lean forward to kiss your Human.

He releases all at once as your lips touch lightly to his. A tear leaks out of his eye, and you feel him impossibly hard against your stomach.

You want to be closer to him, want to divest him of sense entirely. But how would you do that? You know some Humans enjoy penetration. You take a shot in the dark.

“Can you open yourself up for me?” you ask him. It tumbles out without thinking, and your lips smile against his mouth. It’s a condescending tone, challenging and black and everything you want it to be. There’s a little and unrealistic threat that you would open him up anyway despite your claws.

He shivers bodily.

The Human nods even as you’re slipping your tongue into his mouth. It takes him a minute to reciprocate, and when he does it’s with the same lazy dreaminess in his eyes.

Of course, when you sit up on your heels he’s all too quick to roll over to the bedside table and fetch whatever passes as lubricant for him. Surprisingly (because he’s in the rebellion and most likely poor or incognito) it’s actual lube. It’s in a little pink bottle.

You pull his jeans off for him, careful not to damage any of the leftover fabric.

Before you pull off his underwear, you take a second to admire how sticky he is.

 

You did that.

 

More power injects into your mutant bloodstream. And you waste no time setting his legs back around you and dipping forward to kiss him again.

It very obviously makes his angle difficult, and the pace of his fingers erratic, but he doesn’t complain.

Instead, he steadily and slowly opens himself up.

You busy yourself with his mouth, and coaxing your bulge to unsheathe the rest of the way.

He’s laid bare before you, entirely naked and open and spread just for you, and it makes you ache inside.

Soon he mumbles something and shows you his hand to let you know that he’s ready.

And you brace yourself, gripping hands on his back and shoulder to pull him up to sitting in your lap.

You move to cross your legs beneath him, forcing him to kneel over your bulge.

And, writhing, it presses up into his entrance.

The poor thing keens against your neck.

His teeth jut out and clamp down into your neck uselessly, making the most pleasant ache in your shoulder.

When you pull him down entirely onto your bulge, the tightness of him makes your vision go a little white. Your nook throbs painfully, and he starts chanting in what might not even be real words, growling and whining and moaning in turn.

He thrusts forward against your belly, now, and his rigid bulge draws a wet line up through your thoracic fur. His legs twitch and he cries out loudly when you roll back into him.

There’s… Humans don’t have globes. Especially not in whatever passes as a wastechute for them. What is that? There’s something in there, you can’t remember the name.

But he’s obviously feeling it, the slick and soft bulge pressing just so very slightly out and back in, writhing within him, making his legs quake and his knees slide on the bed.

You hear fabric straining taut, and see his toes curling violently in the sheets.

You hold his hips tight with both hands. His elbows grip impossibly tight around your neck. You just grind, moving your hips in the way you think he wants.

He sobs out a moan, chanting and gasping and pleading and his face is stuck in this smile like he’s never fucking smiled before in his life.

Your fingers find his ass, squeezing pleasantly and drawing a full-body spasm from your Human.

Oh, he liked that.

You lift him off of your bulge, ignoring any and all protest as you clumsily turn him over on the bed.

You press his shoulder down into the bed, hand on the back of his neck, and thrust all the way back in.

He nearly screams, he cries out so loud.

You like that sound.

You do it again, and he cries out, knees trying desperately to keep traction on the bedsheets with all their flailing. But you’ve got him. You’re holding his hips where you want them, applying just enough pressure to his neck, and his cheek is smashed into the covers.

His eyes are open, but they’re completely gone. _He’s_ completely gone.

A thin trail of spittle leaks from his mouth and down onto the bed.

You roll your hips into him and he cries out again, softer this time. You grind as you want, now, and he seems to be liking it enough.

The hand on his neck moves, thumb swiping down to clean off the side of his mouth.

“You don’t even know where you are, do you?” you ask. And you know he won’t answer. The Human’s hands, clutching the covers, go tight.

And then he throws his head back, silent with his jaw slack, choking on something.

Your Human falls forward onto your supportive grip and his stomach, totally and completely limp and spent.

You could blow him over with a sneeze.

And he would let you.

That rush happens yet again.

This time, it’s impossibly strong.

It courses through you like a river of lava, and then you’re filling him with your genetic material.

You pull out before too much comes from you, nearly delirious with the sensation.

The weak figure whines again, a satisfied moan following and his dick making a last feeble twitch as you coat the back of his thighs with ejaculate.

It takes you a few minutes to resurface.

The thing that finally brings you back up is fingers in the hair just above your right ear.

When you look up at him, his face is set in an image of nearly catatonic bliss. But he’s seeing you. And he’s back.

 

Huh.

 

He lets his head fall back again, and you slip your arms beneath him to cradle his form.

He gave himself over so entirely.

It’s so dangerous.

It’s so risky.

 

But you want more.

 

Oh.

 

What a lovely, lovely creature.

 

* * *

 

Three months after you first meet the Human, you get an assignment at a hospital.

You haven’t seen the Human for a few weeks, despite seeing him so often before at the club.

You’re trying not to be concerned.

What is it to you that he decided to disappear?

 

…

 

You’re _really_ trying not to be concerned.

You need to see him, though.

Your chest hurts when you think about the idea that he might have chosen to leave you.

Without notice.

You distinctly remember a group of Humans at that club last night, looking at you with venom in their eyes. One of them motioned you over. You flashed the blaster at your hip, and they backed off.

You left.

Now, though, you’re walking into a hospital and touring. You’re on the hunt for someone, a vigilante by the name of Dave Strider. He was last reported as having black hair and a penchant for wearing sunglasses indoors.

You only know one Human that wears sunglasses indoors, but he couldn’t possibly be Dave Fucking Strider.

Strider used to be a movie director, until the symbolism in his films got a little too literal to escape the intolerant eye of the empress. It was propaganda, clearly. And he was to be arrested and killed for treason. Not on the spot; the Empress wants to make an example of him.

But the raiding party that stormed his house found nothing. Just a collection of films, trophies, some old and rusted swords. Strider fights with a flame-blade, now. It’s a dangerous thing. Something one of his cohorts seems to have invented.

You remember callouses on the inside of your Human’s fingers, the one you slept with. Weapon marks.

But he’s not strong.

He has a knife, yes, but that’s to be expected of a revolutionary.

Strider is supposed to be tall, strong, lithe. He’s supposed to have a sharp jawline and an attitude of defiance and no surrender. He never smiles, almost never even emotes. And he likes to wear flashy clothing and talk way too much.

Nothing like your Human.

You follow behind your superior, Surfyr Absolo, along with their security detail of three of your fellow threshecutioners. The sickles you all wear clink in tandem as you walk. And the hallways hush around you. It’s a Human hospital. A poor one.

“We’re here for one person. We heard he was in the area. You will not be punished if you turn him over. We will simply move on,” Absolo says, loudly. Her voice clicks and booms in English, hissing in a heavily accented way that must sound horribly unnatural to these people.

“Dave Strider,” she says then, coming to parade rest. “You know who I’m talking about.”

Humans respond better to not being hurt, the Empress has found. So she makes poignant shows of violence on television, instead of killing an entire hospital because they can’t give her one person. It makes you want to throw up, either way.

But you have to be what you are, or you’ll be found out.

And you’ll be made example of. Like a smear on a highway.

Or a hospital full of Humans.

You try desperately not to see the correlation while you’re working.

Living people can lead her to who she needs, anyway.

None of the Humans in the crowded and overrun hospital say anything. None of them even move.

“We haven’t treated him here, sir,” a surgeon chokes, holding out a hand.

The woman looks terrified.

 

She should be.

“…ma’am?” Absolo asks, too gently. Simpering.

“I said, we haven’t treated him here. Not to my knowledge,” she repeats.

Your commander quiets, contemplative. Her eyes narrow at the woman, and she doesn’t blink or avoid her gaze. She’s not lying.

“You may return to your business,” Absolo says. You almost sigh with relief, but hold yourself back. “However. We will do a sweep by room.”

The surgeon, still in stained scrubs and with medical devices in her hand to work on a patient, closes her mouth. Her eyes widen with… fear, maybe?

Commander Absolo’s grin widens, and she leans in. Her teeth are so long, and sharp.

“And if we find him,” she says, getting in the surgeon’s limited space, “You know what will happen to you.”

This Human says nothing.

“Come now, let’s do our sweep,” Absolo barks. “Cursory glances at first, and don’t make a ruckus. We have guards outside to catch runners, and we don’t need to check every room.”

“Yes, High Commander Absolo!” the four of you state in unison, crackling alternian making some of the nearby Humans flinch.

You begin, and go room by room throughout the meager two floors of the small hospital. Emergency procedures pick back up behind you, and you feel yourself relieved. So they can save some of them. That’s good. There was a riot and a battle in this town last night. That’s why you’re here.

You catch your own yellow eyes and void of a face in a window as you pass it.

You feel disgusted with yourself.

It takes a good amount of time to go through all the rooms. Some you just glance in, seeing women or children, old men and men that very obviously do not fit description. A couple comatose. One with no arms.

And then you arrive to a room that contains someone you did not expect.

When you march in, standing in the back and helping fill the wide door so that none may escape, you find yourself freezing.

There, on the bed, is your Human.

His body is strewn with tubes, his hand wrapped with a small bandage and one of his legs in a cast. He’s wearing a sweater, and he’s not got his sunglasses on, but you recognize him.

It’s definitely him.

 

He’s hurt.

 

… and his eyes are a different color. They’re black.

Maybe you just saw them wrong in the dark, before?

He seems similarly frozen looking at you.

You recognize the bags on his IV stand as painkillers and something else, and you have to stop a needy and piteous chirp from coming out of your throat.

You cough, swallow it down, and look at the floor.

You feel one of your detail’s eyes on you like ice dissolving under a stream of lava.

“Hello, identification and papers,” Absolo says. She doesn’t give the Human a second glance, simply holding her hand out and checking something off of her plasma display in the air.

A woman sitting to the left of the bed… you recognize her as one of the Humans from the club, the group that singled you out.

She pulls out a file and hands it over. Her fingers are shaking.

But all of their fingers have been shaking.

This, though…

You meet her eyes, straighten your shoulders in your tactical gear, and curse the shitty fucking Human sun that this mission did not require helmets.

She is needling you with a look you can only describe as astonishment. And hatred. But more astonishment than hate. Thankfully.

Your Human’s eyes are cast downward, at his bed, when you glance at him.

The female-appearing Human is still staring at you when you look back to her.

Her hair is just as yellow as your Human’s hair, and her face is shaped almost the same. She has the same skin tone, and her nails are painted a light shade of purple. She is holding a thick volume in one hand. It has an… alien of some sort, maybe, in a tall hat on the front.

“I am his sister,” she tells Absolo, and doesn’t even get a cursory glance as her documents are scanned and checked for certification. “We were caught in crossfire yesterday, trying to get home.”

 

The records come out clean.

Then it’s time to scan their identification, and you step forward with the machine for it without needing to be asked.

Absolo checks the identification, and it also comes out clean.

Absolo sighs, and waves the four of you to turn and exit.

You feel so much relief, even as you leave his side.

But you don’t actually think your Human could be Dave Strider.

 

Do you?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! hope yall enjoyed this chapter, and you're having a good week and had a nice weekend! bookmarks and comments and stuff all goes to encourage me to keep going with stuff, and i could use it lately, share stuff with your friends and all that and ill catch ya next week most likely! love yall <3


	3. Chapter 3

He haunts your waking hours, glides through your dreams. Dreams of you tearing him open from his gut, and him crying out in fantastical ecstasy. The dreams make you sick, but he still _trusts_ you.

A patrol saw you, one day.

You had to pretend to be cornering him against a wall with your rifle pressed cruelly into his temple.

That made you even sicker.

But he knew why you had to, and you know why he allowed it and trusts you, still.

That didn’t keep it from aching in your chest.

And he let you tie up his arms and legs and keep him in bed for hours and hours. He was a mess afterwards, but he was glistening with sweat and happy tears, and his whole body was so relaxed you didn’t even want to move him to clean the genetic material from his face and chin.

His throat had felt good around you, and he had allowed you to set the pace, taking him directly to the edge of drowning and back again. His gasps were litanies of relief and contentment. His mouth opened so willingly for you and the back of his head was comfortable under your palm.

You almost tried to ‘make love’ to him, later that night. Tried to give him what most Humans wanted.

But he denied you lightly, insisting that this was preferred.

He wants it like this. He doesn’t want it any other way. Only like this. And you’re oh so willing to make him happy. Because he ‘feels more’, and ‘can let go’, and _‘it doesn’t work any other way, I’ve tried, it won’t happen for some reason’,_ he says.

 

‘It’s only you I want,’ he says.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s been months that you’ve been together. You’ve lost count by now.

Lately you’ve been letting yourself stay longer and longer after you fuck.

The Human has started giving you these looks, like he’s asking you not to leave.

You hold his head in your hands, and rub his temples with your thumbs.

He sighs, contented, and leans into your touch.

Hums when you help him into the bath to lean against your chest.

Murmurs in his sleep when he dozes against your chest and you watch some kind of half-baked troll programming on the television, for the hour or so before you leave him again.

It starts to feel dangerously like belonging.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Another rendezvous.

This one starts black, and against your will, it blisters red.

It’s getting harder and harder to convince yourself that what you’re feeling is quadrants. But it’s impossible to explain it any other way. What words are there for you, when you’ve abandoned what you’re supposed to be, by decree?

 

This night.

This time, with the red and the scorching black, and the feelings so splittingly pastel you almost have a panic attack on top of him. He pulls his fingers down the sides of your face, and he grounds you. His eyes are a sea of tethering ruby in the mass of ugly old cream sheets. You’re locked into him, and he gives you a very small soothing noise.

Comfort - oozing comfort. And safety.

Your heart cracks right down the center.

You end up wanting to stay until morning.

You do, against your better judgement.

It’s four hundred hours exactly when you wake from the deepest sleep you’ve had in months.

Yawning wide, you stretch your sore muscles and sit up to go take a piss.

You never stay this long, and your head doesn’t know how to feel about it.

You look at him.

And he’s so beautiful, so slow.

He’s grinning in his sleep, smile half-hidden in a shitty motel pillow.

A row of light casts across his lower back. Pink, from the neon outside.

It’s smooth on the rises and falls of his spine, delicate like mist in the valley of the dip of the small of his back. That pink against the brown, against the white of the sheets and the darkness of the room.

You trace it with a black finger, and he shifts in his sleep.

Murmurs something.

You didn’t catch it, but that’s fine.

Dust falls so carefully and quietly in the room.

Why hadn’t you stayed before?

Maybe because you didn’t have any leisure time the next day. That’s likely.

His hair moves as one springy mass as he turns his back to you.

The Human’s right hand reaches up to hook over his left side, the long fingers playing subconciously in the darkness of the sheet.

You find a smile on your face.

It makes you sigh, but not… in a negative way. For a change.

A happy sigh?

You roll off the bed gingerly.

The door to the bathroom is cracked open, and you don’t bother closing it while you take care of your business.

Flush, wash hands, a little mouthwash, and then you head back out.

You scratch your ass through your boxers.

On your way to the bed, you spy clothes on the floor, just scattered willy-nilly. It makes you snort a laugh, even as you wince at the mess. It’s your army training that makes you move to pick them up, folding each article before dropping them on the chair in the corner.

No underthings to be found, you’re wearing yours. Ah – but there’s his – sticking out from under the bed. Something like polka dots or something. Ridiculous.

His jacket you cast in a stately way over the back of the chair. Yours doesn’t deserve as much, and remains slung over the desk.

The Human’s belongs. Yours does not. Never will.

He doesn’t stir as you putter about. Might as well tidy the rest before going back to sleep.

The bed looks so inviting and warm. You know for a fact that little space on your Human’s nape smells really pan-rottingly good.

 

But.

As you’re folding your companion’s pants, something falls out of the pocket.

It’s a wallet, you can see that much.

Small, old, a brownish kind of leather and patched on the corner. Ripped and folded, creased leather that’s been around for way too long. It’s flopped open where it landed, the money card slightly askew and the ID tag flashing to the ceiling.

You sigh.

Alright, just need to clean that up. You won’t look.

You pick it up to place with his other things, and that’s when it happens.

You look, curiosity winning out.

You won’t remember his name tomorrow, anyway, right?

You’re wrong, of course.

Everything just crashes behind your eyes.

 

The ID tag.

 

Your breathing shortens, and suddenly it’s hard to find air in the room.

 

Why…

 

Why does his identification say ‘Dave Strider?’

You look at the picture, hoping that for whatever reason he’s faking it. But the ID is real as can be, laminated very officially and bearing a mark from several years ago. In the picture, it’s your Human. Same hair, recently laminated judging by the smell of it.

There would be no advantage to faking his identity as a wanted criminal.

Horror and dread fill your heart.

_Oh no._

What have you done?

Horror.

What have you _done_?

Dread.

You’ll die, for this. You’ll be executed before they even have time to look into your blood color.

So much dread, and fear, and sadness.

 

…and then anger.

Spitting, fiery anger. Impulsive, smashing anger.

He fooled you. All this time.

Sure, he had to. But he fooled you. And he’s got an Empress Bounty on his neck.

You reach to your clothes, going for the dagger you keep hidden in the sleeve of your boot.

Your hand doesn’t shake as you draw it out.

You could just kill him with your hands. You could.

He’s there, back to you, now. Peaceful in his dreaming, and unsuspecting.

It would be so easy.

But…

You… can’t.

It’s still so soft and peaceful in the room.

Dave. Dave _Strider_.

The revolutionary.

_THE_ revolutionary.

Your mind is suddenly caught in a vicious cycle, and the full-body tremors begin.

You could kill him for the honor. For something. Your mutant status wouldn’t even matter, for this prey to be yours. It would never matter again. It would look like sabotage, it would look like you pulled the wool over the eyes of the entire revolution.

But you could protect him.

That’s what you promised to do.

Because he’s here. He’s vulnerable. His back is wide open to your attack, trusting and happy. He gave himself. He trusted you. You.

He did that.

You straighten from the aggressive crouch. The knife drops to the floor.

Your heart plummets with it.

Dave Strider flops over onto his back, and his torso is exposed from beneath the sheets completely. He’s covered in kiss marks and bruises, scratches and gentle red bites from the previous night. And he’s so limp, relaxed. Content.

For you.

No one has ever been this close to you.

Not really.

Not Kanaya, before she was culled for helping the mutant wrigglers. Not Nepeta, your first attempt at a matespritship, culled for refusing enlistment.

Dave sighs, gentle. A puff of dust rises in the pale pink light as he flops a hand out.

And his chin cants in your direction.

His eyes open.

The peaceful stare you see in his eyes is like cooling water on the hot Alternia landscape from your wrigglerhood.

“Hey, you’re here,” he whispers, and he smiles.

At you.

Your heart wrenches into forty million pieces.

Like stars.

Like holes in the sky.

Your face moves without your permission, and you’re smiling back. It’s a crooked and weak thing, that smile.

You love him.

And you pity him so, so much.

Dave sits up. He rubs the heels of his hands across his eyes, groaning with exhaustion. He stretches, and you hear quite a few joints pop as he does so. It would make you concerned, but as he looks himself over, and sees your handiwork, he looks so tiredly settled.

His thumbs pass over bruises with a happy sleepiness, counting the teeth on one mark with waking fascination.

His eyes cast down at the floor, and he sees his wallet there, open.

Almost immediately, the tone of the room changes.

You see horror overcome his face, laugh lines turning into worry and his body tensing to run.

“I saw,” you tell him, stepping toward the door.

And he looks up at you then, eyes gaunt in their sockets and his mouth open in a helpless plea for mercy.

The pity escalates so hard, you think you might throw up.

And then the doorknob moves, lock clicking easily open.

Everything moves so fast after that.

Dave’s face pinches with both fear and frustration, but he doesn’t move.

You leap to stand between him and the door, defensively crouched.

As the door opens, you growl deep and wide, claws and teeth bared. You will take down any trolls or aliens that dare invade your space.

It’s a clear warning to any intruders.

An Earthling walks briskly through the door even as you snarl. Vibrations fill the room. One of the mirrors on the wall shakes, and you hear a gasp from Dave as a weapon is pointed in your direction. They don’t seem to be surprised that you’re here.

Is the place wired?

Your eyes flicker around, and you see none of the telltale signs.

He tries to come around you, but you see the Human before you holding a massive automatic rifle in her arms. Following her is a troll, also wielding a rifle. He’s got a bifurcated yellow tongue when he licks his lips, and two sets of horns. He’s a psionic, or you’re the fucking empress. Is he the escaped helmsman?

Well, one of them? They revolted en masse, not too long ago. It gave the Humans a slight advantage in some cases.

The presence of the troll makes you yank Dave behind you.

Just who all is involved with the revolutionaries?

And then you realize.

In defending Dave Strider, you’ve officially chosen a side.

You’ve chosen.

You’re part of the rebellion, now, in the eyes of the Empire.

The troll doesn’t bother pulling his gun up, and leaves it hanging by his side.

He echoes some of his own vibrations. Submissive, placating. An automatic response. You’re surprised. Without his powers, you could tear him apart. But he could kill you in minutes with his brain, as it is. It’s a shock to your attention span as you scramble to figure out why you’re not dead.

You look to the other Human, holding Dave behind you. No one has said anything except him, but he clearly stopped trying when you wouldn’t let up on your grip on his arm.

“Hey Rose,” he says.

She squints, a deep frown creasing her brow as she levels a barrel between your eyes.

And you put yet another puzzle piece in its place.

This is Rose Lalonde. With a weapon pointed at your face.

Rose Lalonde, the other leader of the rebellion. Dave Strider’s sister.

“Dave,” she returns, and slowly lowers her gun.

The troll with her stops trying to placate. He’s tilting his head to the side, now, holding his hands up.

Pathetic.

“And why are you here?” the Rose Human says.

It takes you a minute to look back at her, and realize you’ve been spoken to.

Your growls are still going strong when you reply. “I am Karkat Vantas,” you drone, and.

She frowns. Her eyes are a piercing honey-lavender.

“Unfortunately, I don’t care,” she says to you.

She clearly recognizes you from the hospital.

Beneath her stare, there is a quietly boiling rage. Barely festooned into poise.

“So that’s your name,” comes a drowsy voice from behind you. “Hot.”

You let up the growl when you hear him yawn, and turn halfway to face him.

“And your name is Dave Strider,” you say.

Completely flat, and without inflection.

He winces, and looks like his stomach has gone through the bottoms of his feet.

“You got it,” he confirms.

“What’s going on here, Dave?” Rose Lalonde asks, high and accusatory.

“C’n you lemme have a minute here?” he asks her, defensive.

“Absolutely not,” she replies, poisonous.

“I don’t even have pants on,” Dave complains. He rustles the sheet about his waist.

Rose Lalonde takes in a sharp breath, and walks up to him, brazenly sidestepping you. It’s your first instinct to want to swipe out, but you restrain yourself. She takes Dave’s chin into her hand.

“This stops,” she nearly spits at him. Before her next sentence, she very obviously looks him up and down. She’s mentally cataloguing his bruises and scratches with increasing bewilderment. “I don’t know what it is, but it stops. Now!”

Dave huffs, and tries to push her hand away. “It’s fine,” he says. Clearly uneasy.

“No it’s not, Dave!” She nearly shouts. “You are endangering _everything_!”

He looks so guilty that it makes you feel like shit on the bottom of a shoe.

“We have a revolution to win. For the _sake of humanity!_ ” she yells. “You’re a _leader!_ ”

Dave jerks his chin up, opens his mouth to spit back at her.

“Stop consorting with the enemy,” she snarls, interrupting whatever he was about to say. “You know he’s _her_ soldier.”

You get the most terrifying glare you’ve ever gotten in your life, before she throws her hand away from Dave’s jaw. His face jerks to the side, and he looks like a ton of bricks just hit him in the belly.

The psionic makes a noise, a deep and unimpressed noise.

And the two newcomers file out of the room.

The door clicks shut.

The air conditioning in the room rumbles to life.

It’s suddenly very cold and dead in the motel. Dave looks up at you, and you turn to him.

He has fire in his eyes, and venom on his teeth.

Pulling himself to his feet, he ditches the sheet, and flattens his body against yours.

“I have no intention of letting you go yet,” he hisses into your mouth.

“I’m already fucked,” you reply, hissing right back. “I might as well get fucked, too.

That makes him laugh, breaking the terror and self-doubt, and he pulls you in for a kiss.

It’s fine. You’re hidden, and if you stay good about it, you can stay that way.

But you can’t stop seeing him.

Not now.

Maybe not ever.

 

* * *

 

It takes less time than you think for everything to blow wide open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! next chapter isnt written yet, but im trying my best to get it done by this weekend most likely and then given to my beta for inspection! 
> 
> thank you for all the commenters and bookmarks and kudos and so on, i love you guys. youre great <3 <3 <3
> 
> hope everyone liked this chapter; lemme know how you feel about it if ya want and have a wonderful rest of your week and weekend! <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :')

You don’t get involved with the revolution.

Rose Lalonde has a good amount of say in that.

It’s tense, and you don’t talk about it, but you and Dave maintain your sides.

You wouldn’t be able to leave the Service without them knowing and finding you before you even got the chance to step off the boat with your things. Or without them; who knows.

Dave knows it, and you know it. You’re just a threshecutioner, dipping into the background with the many of your kind; useful, but even specialized assets don’t live if they betray the Empire. Expensive to replace, but not _that_ expensive. Often corralled into front-lining and guarding upper ranks. Or a patrol duty, like you’ve been shoehorned into.

Would you be more use as a double agent in the future? Or… something. The idea makes you so extremely uncomfortable.

There are moments where you fantasize about plans to escape, and join the Humans. But the idea of running away is more terrifying than you want to put thought into.

If you didn’t show up for a shift, they would find you; you’re not sure if you would just be immediately culled, or given allowance to plead your case.

No one is allowed to miss a turn of duty in Her Majesty’s Threshecutioner Corps. Punishment follows.

It’s a bit extreme, but that’s the reality of your life. Luckily for you, you don’t seem to break bones or get sick at all as a result of your mutation.

You know this, as one of five who survived a biological weapon attack on another planet. That one went down much easier; they actually surrendered.

“Hey, we’re here,” Dave’s voice barks out from a small doorway.

You shake your head to rid yourself of your wandering thoughts, and follow him out of the hallway.

“What’s gotcha so distracted?” he asks, once you’re inside the room.

You sigh, and mutter something about ‘work’.

He knows what that means.

And he leaves it alone, as per usual.

The old decrepit apartment building you’ve been wandering around in is mostly quiet. There are a few families living here, for lack of a better place to go. And by the smell of it, there’s a sopor den somewhere in the basement.

That smell is completely gone in this part of the building, and you hear no crying babies or coughing.

The balconies out past the windows are held up by joists, and the mid-afternoon light pours into the room, yellowing the air and giving everything a sepia tinge.

Dave steps in as you close the door, turning around with arms spread and a grin on his soft mouth.

“Well?” he asks, gesturing widely to the room.

It’s been cleaned up, dirtier furniture shifted off to the side and a surprisingly clean- looking mattress with a top sheet pulled to the wall between the two windows. There are way too many throw pillows on that mattress, and the blankets spill off of it and onto the wooden floor.

“Are you trying to pile me, Dave Strider?” you ask him, and he frowns.

“No, I just wanted somewhere nice for our first… whatever the fuck this is,” he tells you, huffing and turning to adjust some kind of box on the ground.

There’s a solar generator on the balcony, obvious and near-quiet. The building doesn’t have electricity, so you’re guessing generators are common enough.

Dave turns his head a little, quirking his mouth up. “Just set up the picnic, okay?” he asks, and you sigh, moving to do as he requests.

“Did you clean this room?” you ask, laying out what you have for the absolutely shitty picnic.

“Yeah,” Dave says, and you can hear the proud smile in his voice.

It fills you with warmth that he would do that for you. You admire him for a second, where he’s crouched. His fingers are deft as he fiddles with something, and then pops a round piece of metal into a slot in the box.

From the box begins to stream ribbons of light that cut through the dust. And a film projects out onto the wall.

The audio is soft and tinny, but your eyes are still wide with fascination. A picture-show, here?

“If you keep your mouth open like that for too long, you’re gonna catch a fly,” comes a smart little voice from next to you, and you glance over at him.

A nice mid-October breeze floats through the room, ruffling Dave’s hair as he grins at you.

“How did you know I liked Pictures, Dave?” you ask him, turning back to the food. From the look of it, there are advertisements before the actual film. A little strange, since those are supposed to come in the middle. But ah well.

“Just a guess,” he says, and comes over to flop down onto the mattress. “Thought I would get something special to do together, since you used your afternoon off for me and everything.”

His tone is mild and happy as he helps to sort out the snacks.

The side of his face is so lovely and gentle.

You can see the lines around his mouth from clenching his jaw, and the scars that stand barely-raised above the skin on his neck and where the hem of his shirt just barely rucks up. It’s hard to believe that someone so soft can be so hardened by battle.

Well, it’s even harder to believe that you’re the one he allows his guard down around.

Today, on your afternoon off, you were invited to go hunting with some of your fellow patrolmen. They like to go swimming in old ponds, not fearing highbloods in the water, and explore in the many tree-laden expanses. They thought nothing of you going off on your own.

They just cackled hoarsely for the most part, used to you being a loner.

And they told you to mind the “rats.” This is what they call the Humans.

“Is grub loaf made of grubs?” Dave pipes up, some amount of mild disgust in his tone.

You turn to him, and he’s going through the section of rations that you decided to bring down. As a threshecutioner, you get a pretty decent amount to keep you virile and strong.

“Yeah,” you tell him, separating portions of salted meats and thin biscuits Dave brought.

“What?” Dave asks, and his hands leave the pile. “Isn’t that cannibalism? Aren’t you bug people?”

You look up at him, tired sigh leaving your mouth. He looks a mix between revolted and unsurprised. You’re not sure which is more insulting.

“No, you pile of incongruous refuse,” you snap at him, “We don’t call our young grubs.”

Dave snorts, and the disgust leaves his face. He leans forward to open the canister of cool water you brought for the afternoon.

“Oh,” he says, and then snorts loudly. “My bad.”

“Yes, your bad,” you say, through a smile.

Dave also managed to steal some plums, an orange, and one cupcake to split between you. He also got Rose to buys some apple juice, and he pulls it out of the large lunch box with victory on his face.

The movie plays in the background, and neither of you pay it too much mind or try to follow the plot.

Dave spends half of the movie making up personalities and lines for the characters, and you eventually put his head on your lap to get him to shut up.

The salted meats are savory, the plums are delicious and juicy, and the cupcake ends up being shoved piece by piece into each other’s mouths. Some of it ends up on your faces with all the laughter.

Dave giggles as you lick frosting from his cheek and nose, and you sigh as he puts his mouth to yours, searching for more sugar.

As the time passes, and the mid-afternoon turns into evening, the light from the windows shifts across the floor. It paints the air gold, and every breath you take in is suffused with light and happiness.

Dave’s head ends up back on your lap, and you trace the outline of his lips with your thumb.

He sinks into his own world again, admiring how the sun glints off of the tips of the hairs on your skin.

Patterns are invented and painted by his fingertips on the ‘weird velvety texture.’ Dave sighs as skin passes easily over yours.

It’s quiet, and the movie plays on.

 

You lean against the wall.

 

“Do you hate being on the run?” you ask, eventually, just for something to say.

The question has been itching at the back of your mind anyway, niggling and familiar.

Dave, curled around your hand, replies softly. You see a pair of tears well up, and spill over the soft ledge of his eyelids. Your nose prickles with phantom sadness, and you suck in a breath to keep the calm from allowing you to succumb to emotion.

“No,” he says. He exhales what seems like fairy dust and wishes. His response is what you expected. “I have to be, but… some places aren’t so bad. And Texas is pretty big. It’ll be over soon, I hope.”

It’s quiet for a long several moments. The film plays in the background, swelling music filled to the brim with something like hope.

Dave’s admission takes you back to that hospital, when you had been so blind to what he really was. It seems like decades ago, even, and you almost want to laugh at your incredulous wonderings. _’He can’t possibly be Dave Strider’_ you provide for yourself in whatever passes as mocking humor without a voice to say it.

Thinking about the hospital reminds you of something.

He was there, reclined in the bed, barely conscious and eyes black as night.

“Hey, in the hospital,” you start, and Dave’s hand twitches on your thigh.

“Back when I got ‘caught in crossfire’?” he asks, and you feel a huff of warm breath as he laughs.

Outside the windows, it’s gotten dim, and you hear the patter of rain start to hit the one that still has glass.

It makes you relax just that small bit more as you reply. Surveillance is more difficult when it rains, and patrols will be less strict or pervasive. That’s good for the Humans.

“Yeah, then,” you say, carding your claws through the soft hair at Dave’s nape.

He sighs and sinks into the mattress.

“I had been running from a scout, and had to jump off of a roof into a dumpster,” he says, and oh. That makes sense. “I hit a fire escape on the way down, and just barely made it to Rose’s so she could wash the dye out of my hair and put in the contacts before she carted me to a doctor.”

This news doesn’t surprise you, but it makes you huff and tense up anyway. The idea of Dave being injured brings back the feelings of protection and need to comfort that you had pushed down that day, so long ago.

“How did you forge your identity so well?” you ask him, trying to distract yourself from the thought of him being so badly hurt.

Dave snorts at this.

You raise an eyebrow, and look down to find him peering up at you, past your arms.

“Your scanners were child’s play to forge once we knew the frequency codes,” he says, confident, and you’re actually shocked this time.

Huh. So that’s how they do it.

“You know Sollux?” he asks, then, and you sort through your mental identity catalog before pulling him up.

“The psionic that came in that one day?” you wonder, “With Rose?”

Dave looks away again, nodding. “Yeah,” he says, and a relaxed smile spreads back over his face.

“He’s our tech guy, now, once he passed his Loyalty Tests,” he explains, making a circular motion with his hand. His fingers stop on your thigh, and he walks the first two up your leg, making the little humanoid shape run and jump.

It’s a little cliché that a yellow-blood would be their tech, but you guess it makes sense. Organic mainframes are harder to trace than the metallized ones that humans prefer.

“So he ended up being able to get passcodes, and hack into troll systems to get some security numbers for documents,” Dave tells you. “From there it was easy as sliding off a greasy log backwards to forge some identities with the same specs and materials.”

“Oh,” you say, and think about this closer. How many times were they able to slip past unknown? How many humans have these fake documents?

You bark out a crunchy laugh, ruffling Dave’s hair. It’s excellent news.

“I used my dead father’s identity, and Rose used our mom’s,” Dave explains further, and at this you laugh again. “Troll systems have a hard time with families and matching genetics so it passes way easily. Never been caught.”

The thought of cultural differences being the downfall of Her Imperial Condescension’s Impenetrable System is the single greatest thing you’ve heard in a long time.

By the time you’re done laughing, Dave has sat up next to you.

He’s leaning his head on your shoulder, and a dopey grin adorns his face.

“That makes you happy, huh?” he asks you, and you reach over with your other hand to push his bangs back. The kiss you place on his forehead makes him close his eyes.

“Anything to screw over the Empire makes me happy, Dave,” you tell him.

He snorts.

 

As you pet his head, the movie ends.

 

Credits roll.

 

Another one begins to play, and Dave sits back from you.

“So I’m not in the mood for sex today,” he tells you, and you shrug. “But I was wondering if you could put me under? For relaxation?”

The question is so soft, at first you don’t think you’ve heard him right.

Dave leans up, kissing gently at the corner of your mouth.

Briefly, you push him back with your own.

His mouth pushes, insistent, like a request.

When you separate your lips, he’s sitting there with that same inquiry on his tongue and in his eyes.

“Sure,” you say. It doesn’t take any thought.

Dave grins, sighing, already going a little happy.

Stretching, you peel your back away from the wall and the pillows.

The rain outside is still persistent, however calm. The air in the room is pleasantly cool, now, and you get up to go lock the door.

“Stay there,” you tell Dave, and he does as you ask.

The door locks when you turn it, but you still prop a spare chair underneath the handle.

The fire escape isn’t below your window, and there aren’t any other ways to be bothered soon in the room you’re in upon inspection.

On your way back to the mattress, you look around the room a bit. After some search, you end up finding and picking up a piece of yarn from the floor.

It’s reasonably soft and innocuous, white in color and lost among the other things in the room. Maybe two feet long.

The caretaker role takes over you, like slowly filling a glass with cool, refreshing water. It feels good and true as you inhale the smell of fresh rain from outside. You try to think of something to do to help him reach his peace. It’s easy enough most days, but you’re a little guilty of not quite knowing how to do it without sex involved.

True to form, Dave is right where you left him when you return. Next to him on the mattress is the bag with the leftovers from your picnic. The only thing that hasn’t been eaten yet is the orange.

 

There, that’s it.

 

You sit down where you were before, and gesture for Dave to come over. He acts with utmost obedience, crawling to sit between your bent knees with legs crossed. A huff, and you pull him a little closer, folding your lower limbs in a circle around his sitting form.

“Hold out your arms,” you tell him, and Dave’s head cants to the side. His shoulders slump a little, and he does as you requested.

His arms are separated, so you gently pull them together.

You handle his skin with care, and Dave shivers. A cool draft pours through the room, and you resolve to give him a blanket before you really begin.

Once you have his wrists crossed, and you’re humming a soft tune under your breath, you reach down to the mattress and get your string.

It goes around his wrists once, with enough room to tie a pretty bow.

And when you look up at Dave, his eyes are fogged and chin heavy. His whole posture is lazy and unaware, and you silently applaud yourself on getting him this far, this fast.

Dave treats that yarn like it’s a deadweight. And when you let go of it, his arms fall heavily into his lap, as if it’s shackles or ropes or chains. Pride suffuses into your chest, and you brush the hair back from his forehead yet again.

As he sits there, breath moving impossibly slowly, his face follows your hand. He leans forward as it leaves his skin, and looks up at you with doe eyes and sparkling dew.

You can see that he’s gone. Dave’s eyes are glazed and sleepy-happy, like he’s entered somewhere else, somewhere safe. His own special somewhere where you can always protect him.

“Alright,” you say, and Dave attempts to straighten. His mouth opens partway, but he says nothing, does nothing.

“I’ll peel the orange,” you say, picking the tough-skinned fruit up in your claws. “And you feed it to me.”

Dave nods, and he silently watches you strip the pungent skin. It comes off easily in your claws, staining the tips just barely. It’s certainly fragrant, piercing the air with its scent and zest.

As soon as you’re done with that, Dave holds out his hands to receive a slice.

One by one, you pick apart sections in your hands. It’s cool, and makes your hands sticky and damp.

Dave presses each section to your mouth _oh so_ slowly, both hands traveling and careful not to trail on your chest as they move together. You make him hold the fruit up longer than it takes you to chew it, making him wait and be patient to feed you.

You hold Dave up with a steadying palm on his waist, and he allows his fingers to linger at the pout of your lips.

Each morsel is sweet and tart, bursting in your mouth and so so utterly delicious.

As you chew, you watch Dave watch the corner of your jaw move. His head behind his eyes is blank, but a hint of a smile teases on the edge of his lip.

The very last slice of the fruit, the thirteenth, goes to Dave.

He holds out his hands for it, but you push his wrists down with a single finger on the bow in the center.

“No, this one is for you,” you tell him, and he eagerly open his mouth. “For doing such a good job.”

You slice open the side of the piece so that some of the juice leaks out stickily onto your fingers. Dave sighs as you push it into his mouth, and it slides flavor across his tongue.

“Thank you,” he slurs, and you wipe a drip of juice from his chin.

“Good,” you say, and lay the peel on top of the rest of the leftovers from lunch. “Now, lay down.”

Dave does so happily, leaning his upper half against your right knee, and hooking his own legs over your left.

You pull him toward you, and he puts his weight sideways against your torso.

The quiet that ensues lasts for the entire duration of the rest of the movie. He’s still, and every now and then you check to make sure he hasn’t fallen asleep.

The noise of the rain outside is a calming background noise as a curtain of darkness takes over the world.

Eventually, he starts to fidget, and you know he’s had his fill.

The string comes off his wrists with a snip of your claws, and he rolls them a little.

You get a kiss pressed into the bottom of your chin.

It makes you want to get away. Makes you want to be with him, and only him, for days, weeks, perigees, sweeps, the rest of your life.

That one simple act of affection on a vulnerable spot on your body feels so precious and clandestine, it aches.

 

But… would he want to come with you?

Before you can stop it, a leading question bursts from your lips.

“How do you feel, being a leader?” you ask him.

“It’s a lot,” he replies, but doesn’t say much else. You’re pretty used to him being essentially nonverbal after a session.

“Maybe you could take a break? I could get time off, and we could do this for a few days,” you tell him.

Dave looses a happy sigh into the air. It’s obvious that thinking about it makes him happy. But there’s something else, there, too. Wistfulness, disappointment.

“No,” he admits, “I have people to protect.”

He’s frowning, now, and you might call off the conversation soon and either put him back under or give him a shoulder massage.

“You have your sister to stand in, don’t you?” you ask, then, and you’re about to assure him that he doesn’t have to answer when he speaks up.

“This conversation topic isn’t great,” he says.

And you sigh.

“Okay, we can stop,” you say, and give him a lasting kiss.

You run your fingers through his curls, and scratch his head. Dave curves like a cat into the petting, re-settling like a dead weight with leaden eyelids.

Once the second movie’s credits have run, and you’re thinking about getting everything ready to take Dave back and return to your barracks, he speaks up.

“Besides, we have a plan,” he tells you.

You don’t even have to think about it.

“I don’t want to know,” you tell him, and Dave waves you off.

His nose buries into your chest.

“Don’t worry,” he murmurs.

 

“I’ll keep you safe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is gonna be fun!!!!
> 
> i hope everyone is having a good week, things are looking up for me! i was thinking of trying a rosemary thing and i have some ideation written out for it but im not fully sure yet! anyhoo, hehe, i loove yall <3 <3 best of luck in your endeavors, see you in a week :)


	5. Chapter 5

It goes on for another few perigees, this thing you have with Dave.

It’s a cheap solace in the wreckage.

Strife increases by the week.

More and more revolutionaries are joining up, being armed, and fighting back. The humans here managed to get ahold of a few good missiles, and two of the Imperial Fleet were annihilated in the sky.

The Condesce has managed to ‘colonize’ maybe three quarters of the planet so far, but then she was pushed back again. It’s been a struggle, but you’ve been kept in the same city on patrol. Thankfully.

This way, it’s easier to meet Dave. Much easier. Yes, he moves around, but he’s usually within an hour or two of where you are. The travel time is no object, not for him. And that same club keeps popping up, yet to be raided.

You see him on the street in a riot. His eyes burn into yours, and you stand silently in a wall of people that would probably rather see half of his race burned to a crisp. It’s awful, and wrong, and you feel sick.

They would also love to see you in the pyre.

You probably will be, eventually.

It’s only a matter of time; mutations are culled from the herd before they can affect the crop.

There is an outcry from the Humans, half of them strapped into plastic-bottle-gas masks and the other half choking even as they chant and ready their rocks and patched weapons. It’s about to turn to worse violence than before; it was a calculated match between the invaders and the Earthlings.

The elementary school parking lot where this is taking place is little more than a flat-top with some rubble, now.

There are more of you than there are Humans. And even if it’s just hundreds versus hundreds, it’s still unfair.

You’re hoping that some of the Humans will run, that they will give up before bloodshed.

Dave is there, in the front, and his eyes level on your side, searching even as the weapons are raised to confront him. There’s no reflection of a wall of imposing trolls on his face; where is his eyewear? Your hands are shaking on your sickles, and you let them come down a few inches in your row, gasping for breath.

His face is so bare, so open to the fading golden sunlight of evening.

How many do you have to reap? Before it’s enough?

Your mind’s refusal can’t hold a candle to your fear of being found out. When someone from your squad kicks the back of your boot, you tense back up again with a healthy snarl.

Dave zeroes in on you, then, and his eyes are steel without his shades to protect you. But there’s a softness, a heat, something just there for you. Damn him. Why does he trust you? Why do you even deserve him? What have you done to earn the special treatment?!

You’re a murderer!

A fucking murderer!

Your fingers ache, your face claws and the corners of your mouth wobble as you crave the space to reach out and hold him.

He holds your gaze, and nods. His mouth opens to call the revolution away.

You realize that this is the ‘plan’ he spoke of before.

They run, just like you hoped.

 

But Absolo opens her maw, and shrieks for the chase.

Smoke billows between the crowds, and you lose sight of Dave.

Some of the Humans don’t escape.

 

But the diversion works, and another two Imperial Fleet ships go down over Iowa.

So that was his plan?

They’re winning, now.

You see Dave again later that week.

 

He’s not limping, not even scratched. His face is weary, drawn with loss.

You whisper to him.

Cradle him.

Tell him you’re sorry.

He forgives you, somehow.

That you’re sorry you’re a monster.

He still forgives you.

You cry thinking about all he loves, lost.

Being culled would be better.

There are tears for yourself, as well. All your comrades in arms, despicable or killed in battle either by their own for weakness, or by the enemy for not wanting to fight.

He weeps with you.

You share your names between you like prayers.

 

* * *

 

You’re at the club again, and it’s early ‘December’ by the human calendar.

The event is being hosted in a warehouse, deep in the dark basement floor and filled to the brim with dancing bodies.

They rub up against you, none of them wary of your colors or uniform, none of them caring.

Alcohol taints your breath and lightens your veins.

Dave has a small sparkling star painted on the side of his face, and he’s got more skin showing than you’ve seen before, despite the cool air outside. Granted, it’s only a tank top and some of the same pants he always wears, but it’s still different. The extra bit of exposed skin warms your fingertips and makes your nose tingle with the scent of his neck.

He’s smiling for the first time in a week. His eyes are squinted against the light, and his arms are thrown gaily around your shoulders.

It’s a special day for him, he says. Rose can’t tell him what to do today.

_His breath tastes like sugar and booze._

He won’t say why it’s a special day, but he giggles when you ask. That’s either the alcohol or the endorphins. Probably both, if your bet is right.

Something smooth is playing; something slower, with a lot of deeper notes that thrum into your bones and the surface of the floor. They pump in through Dave’s eyes, pulse with his jugular, electrify your nerves where you make contact with his skin.

It’s getting Dave so close to you, getting him to sing the words into your lips, getting him to grind on you like he’s never going to get to do it again.

And you like him there, hips between your claws and letting you choose the pace.

The air of the room is incandescent, sheer and light. Glittering spider webs of sensation link your fingers to the electricity of his heart, almost.

His friends beckon you over. Both of you come, and for the first time they don’t frown at you. They’re all dressed for fun, as well; gone for the most part are their scrubby clothes in various shades of khaki with the symbol on the shoulder. Gone are the frowns on their faces, and the vitriol directed at you.

His sister Rose is absent, conspicuously, but his friend with the glasses and the dark hair is here. He claps him on the back and cracks a joke you don’t get, but makes Dave’s face fill with red. There’s another troll at this table, a rust blood with a toothpick in her mouth and a long ponytail. She nods when you meet eyes, and you look away.

They’re celebrating their success in Iowa, and you’re still trying to figure out whether or not you also deserve to honor the victory.

Dave leans over to murmur something in your ear, silken words running delicately over the shell and across the pointed tip. His friends tease him, ordering a new round of drinks.

You’re just getting used to the sensation of him playing with the hair at the nape of your neck when it happens.

The lights in the warehouse all come on at the same time, bright as daylight.

 

 

When the screaming begins,

 

it starts at the doors.

 

Bodies and hands begin to push and scramble as humans and trolls alike try to get out.

Glass falls and smash on the floor, people cry out in pain, people yell about where to go and how to get out.

You grab for Dave, ignoring his friends.

It’s instinct when you pull him toward the closest window. You know how these things work. They’re not interested in anything but numbers. And they’ll get the most of those from stragglers and people leaving through doors. And Dave. Dave needs to get away.

His eyes are wide. He looks so scared.

And the window, when you get to it, won’t open.

It’s shielded on one side by a set of bars, and you wonder who thought that was a good idea location-wise.

Frantic, you look around. Panic races in your heart as you try to figure out a good point from which to leave.

Soldiers are pouring in from every angle, every door and available window. Some people have managed to escape, you can tell, but they’re catching and restraining everyone they can. Shrill crying rings out, you hear the sound of blaster fire. It makes a deep boom over the sound of the music still thrumming, frantic, in the air.

 ** _”Bring us Karkat Vantas and Dave Strider,”_** a voice on a megaphone says.

You and Dave freeze where you stand.

 

They know.

 

You bolt.

Dave in tow, you try to escape.

Oh, you try.

You push through the screaming and the sweat, wincing at the too-bright spotlights. Gas grenades whizz through the air. Dave won’t be able to breathe that. You’ll be fine, though.

You have a pocket respirator that will work for him!

Stopping mid-stride, you scrabble at your waist for the respirator. It finally comes into your grasp, and you turn to give it to Dave.

A wave of people overcomes you both, and he gets separated.

His hand slips from yours, no matter how hard you grip. The respirator falls to the ground and is crushed underfoot.

You look back, and he just gets pushed further and further away. After a few seconds, he’s surrounded.

“Run!” He screams, and you hear gunfire. Dave looks so terrified, his mouth garishly wide and his shades cracked on the floor. Two trolls come in from the sides, grabbing him by the arms.

 _”Run!”_ One of his captors punches him in the side of the head. The thump is audible.

You see his eyes roll back, and his chin lolls.

 

No, please.

 

But you keep trying.

If you escape, maybe you can save him.

You scramble for the exit, pusher pumping in your chest, adrenaline commanding your every desperate move.

It hurts to breathe, now, hurts to try. There’s a pain in your leg that you can’t identify, but it feels shakey and burning and you just _have to get out_.

It’s all you can do.

You only make it a few more feet, before the familiar feeling of an arrest tether twists around your ankles.

The world goes down heavy, head ringing. The noise in the room almost seems to decrease as you try to regain your lost breath. It’s a struggle, but you lift your chin for just a second. Before you can do anything else, though, your cheek is pressed into the floor by a boot on your face.

Your body spasms from the electricity of the tether on your legs.

Gasping, you try to turn your chin.

You see Dave, also on the floor.

The crowd has thinned. They’re letting the rest of them go, pushing and screaming.

The soldiers around you stare. Some of them are grinning, one of them is laughing hoarsely.

One of them spits in your eye.

“We got ‘em!” Someone says in Alternian.

Dave is conscious and crying. His lip is bloody, and there are tears streaming from his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he mouths to you.

The room is full of smoke and the cacophony of terror, but the air around his face is clear. Time seems to almost freeze as you catch his eye, and you swear you see him smile at you, light in the dark, your sun, your savior.

And then his mouth opens in a terrifying maw of agony, the last traces of happiness you managed to scrape together for him, gone. Replaced only with despair and the disappointment of loss.

And oh, how it's all your fault.

It’s hard to even think about moving, but you struggle all the same.

Something white-hot spears you in the back of the neck, and you shout and snarl, wounded.

You can’t hear anything anymore. It’s silent but for the ringing in your ears. Dave’s visage in front of you blurs woozily, and his mouth opens crookedly.

A grenade is thrown into the room.

It rolls over to your face. You recognize the design as the cobbled-together technology of the resistance. A thermal shrapnel grenade.

The pin hasn’t been fully pulled. If it were, then maybe you could… get away? Take out some of these soldiers?

No, you’re a fool!

You would only need to puncture it with your claws, and it would take out the trolls around you.

Dave could get away.

You try to reach it with your closest arm, but you can’t reach. You just can’t reach. No matter how hard you try, you can’t.

 

He would be safe.

But you just… can’t…

 

Reach.

 

A second burst of white-hot and cold and shaking hits your arm, this time.

The boot leaves your back, and you scramble and try to reach again.

You scream as the boot comes down on your arm instead, and your humerus shatters beneath it, bone snapping through the meat.

Dave shouts a plea from nearby. His voice is shrill as he begs them to stop hurting you.

And then everything goes black.

 

* * *

 

When things reappear, you’re in a chair.

The floor is swaying before you, square tiles turning diagonal and the walls starting to join the dance.

A wave of nausea comes, and goes.

Your ankles and wrists are chained down. You can’t move.

Something drips into an IV in front of you. Bandages line one of your arms, and one of your legs. There’s no pain, and you’re feeling dizzy.

What’s… going on?

It’s hard to remember anything. Memory is fuzzy at best, struggling to slither up through the cavern of your mind.

Last thing you can recall is Iowa. A little strange that you would be in what looks like an inquiry cell.

It’s sterile in the little white room. There are bars on one side. Three trolls - that you can see - stand with you on your side of a squat gray table. It’s your patrol, and their faces are all grim. One of them stares at you with disgust.

From your left, betrayal.

That’s your bunkmate.

What happened?

Did they find out about…

oh.

**_Dave._ **

 

They must have.

It’s an expected and just punishment, whatever is happening. It only makes sense that if they found out, you would have been tortured. Maybe beaten.

Someone coughs daintily, and you jerk your chin up.

Across the table in front of you, you see the giant proportions of a highblood.

Pink lines, gold jewellry, and… oh.

It’s her.

The Condesce.

You’re startled, to say the least.

You’ve never seen her in person.

She’s shorter than you expected.

Her arms are relaxed, and she’s holding a rather beatific smile on her face. Sharp fangs gleam at you from her mouth, and she says nothing.

Does nothing.

No one says anything in the room.

It’s silent, except for the IV drip.

You sigh.

Well, if they got you, that means they know.

And that means Dave won’t be captured because of you.

But wait, that… doesn’t make any sense. You were with him every day for more than a week after Iowa.

_Oh no._

Dave.

Where—

The panic at the club rushes back. It takes your drugged brain long enough to reel itself in and catch up, but when it does, you find your breath shortening, your face stretching and arms clenching impossibly tight on the chair.

The wood of the chair creaks.

Dave. At the club.

He was… taken.

_Where is he?_

You’re afraid to look around the room, but something catches your eye.

It’s a small laptop computer, placed on the table before you and just off to the side.

You didn’t see that before. Did someone just put it out?

It shows a video. The little box in the corner says that it’s a live feed. Archaic technology. Human technology?

It’s… the roof of the White House. You know she’s taken up station there.

There’s a figure knelt on the gray of the roof, just in front of the flag pole. Its arms are bound behind its back, and its head is bowed. A taller figure stands next to the first. The taller figure has a laser pistol in its hand.

Horror blooms in your chest.

The video zooms into the kneeling figure, and you can see its face.

Broken, bleeding from missing teeth.

One of his ears is half-missing.

Too-familiar blonde hair.

A shaky smile.

When did they take him there?

It’s an icy hot knife in the boiling cavern of your heart, stabbing through the haze in your brain.

“Karkat,” the figure mouths.

The pistol fires.

It misses the first time, cutting a clear hole through Dave’s upper arm. He retches with the pain of it as the pistol is recharged.

The second and third times, it definitely doesn’t miss.

The head rolls away from the body.

You scream in agony, ripping the cuffs from the chair and yanking the intravenous tube from your arm.

The Condesce’s mouth pulls wide, a midnight expanse of teeth as you lunge across the table.

The live feed cuts out.

You’re pulled back from her by your ex-teammates. Their claws dig into your scalp and hair, and once more you’re thrown to the floor. Your teeth scrape cruelly on the polished concrete, and the taste of copper fills your mouth from the very roots of your fangs.

You’re struggling, roaring and shrieking and snarling. Helpless, held down. Woozy and drugged and incapable of doing much of anything.

The table is kicked by one fuchsia-heeled boot, and flies across the room. Both the technology and the wood splinter against the bars.

The Condesce crouches before you.

Her face comes down to your level, even as your snarls send blood and spittle spraying out from your mouth. She’s still grinning, and remains unfazed by the noise.

“We will learn, won’t we? Vantas?” she asks, mock-gently. Her fingers come out and cup the side of your face. You spit on her.

She smiles wider.

Your snarls turn to silence as they break both of your arms at the elbows.

“You will be our next example,” she hisses, standing. “And you will be the reason this puny hunk of rock finally crumbles.”

The image of Dave falling to that roof crashes behind your eyes.

Your eyes leak as your claws are pulled out one by one on that floor.

Dave’s beautiful face. So lovely, so eternal for you.

And he’s gone.

Her Imperial Condescension scoffs as your blood litters the floor. “Disgusting mutant.”

She leaves.

Dave’s gone.

And you’re gone.

It aches, and you sob.

One of them kicks you on that cell floor. They spit on you and call you all manner of disgusting and hateful things.

But the only thing you can think of is Dave.

 

They give you no respite before you’re taken out of the room, dragged up the stairs, and strung up in your place of execution.

 

* * *

 

The shackles are hot on your wrists.

 

You’d blacked out, for awhile.

It was blissful.

 

The dawn is encroaching over the horizon, and you’ll be put to death soon.

As soon as the marker hits for the designated eight hours of screen time on all news networks.

 

You recognize where you are, now. You’re on the roof.

 

You realize who the body is.

 

He’s still burning.

You see the little glittery star shining at you out of the flames, somehow untarnished.

You start to weep.

There’s a camera in front of you, recording it. But you cry.

The heat of the flames dries your tears before they can fall.

And you close your eyes on the bright spotlights pointed at you in the dark.

You close your eyes on the pain of the burning metal searing your bones.

It’s not soon enough that you feel the blade touch your neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stay tuned for the epilogue
> 
> hope everyone is doing well and has a great weekend! <3


	6. Chapter 6

When you startle awake, you leap outta your chair like you’re rice, the ceiling’s white, and someone’s got a hankering for a well-known grain staple and some shitty-variety Chinese food. The grub is greasy, chopsticks are missing, and you’re slipping out of your chair like it’s gotten everywhere.

Granted, the only time you even got Chinese was for your birthday when you were ten, or when Bro had some leftovers lying around. He’d leave the open half-eaten containers on the counter, clearly not meaning to throw them away or finish them; for you, you always thought. And it was your perfect opportunity to dart in (once he left) and try to snag some before it got cold, or else attempt to brave the smuppet-filled microwave.

Itchy.

For no fucking reason, your hand is really, _really_ itchy.

And for some strange reason that has most likely everything to do with the fingers being asleep, you _reeeeally_ fuckin’ doubt you’re gonna find any money.

Huffing, you sit up, and attempt some deep breaths to try to even everything out.

As you run your fingertips over the grid-lined waffle imprint that your keyboard left on your face, you look around.

It’s a ritual, every time you rise from sleep. The gunmetal walls are glanced over, and the messy bedspread you never make is still in its nest from when you curled up last night. The ceiling is way too high, as always, giving you way too much space to think about defending yourself from, and the cold floors are still littered with your mildewy, growing, damp, towel collection.

It’s so mildewy you might need to bleach your floor. It’s so mildewy it’s making a smog (just kidding, but there’s a reason Karkat always wants to hang in the common area) and the little mildew people have started their industrial revolution, complete with child labor and a lack of good building coding to prevent most of the country from going up in unforgiving flames. The mildew people have started discovering eastern philosophy, it’s so cultured. Incredible.

Aside from that, though, there’s no stink.

Rose claims your room has a distinct “boy smell” that’s only propagated by the worn-out chest binders you never wash and leave everywhere.

Okay, maybe it stinks.

But it still doesn’t smell bad to _you_. And Karkat makes you shower every day or he won’t hang out with you anymore unless you’re having a Bad Time, so at least _you_ don’t smell. And you have enough clothes that you almost never have to wash them.

Anyways.

Scratching your arm, you confirm that everything is in the same place you left it.

Meteor. Got it.

The itch flares, spreading to your whole left side, and then your entire body.

Fuck.

For a brief and terrifying second, you have a flash of explosions, guns, screaming.

Fire licking up and down your skin.

A sword, and blood.

Looking down from a roof, seeing only fire below.

Big warm hands, soft words.

Grenades and heat.

Kisses that give you whiplash from how the thought settles you into a calm so deep you’ve never felt it before; just split seconds of calm, and shouting.

God, that pizza didn’t treat you right at all.

Fuck Rose’s gambles at alchemizing junk food.

And also, fuck Rose’s gambles at manufacturing her own laundry soap. The must be what’s making your skin feel like this. Even if it’s dying already.

“Leave it to Rose to try to make Tide, and instead make acid powder,” you mumble, and then a barrage of other words spill out that you don’t even bother thinking about. They warm up your tired throat, soothe the crackling feeling in your jaw like you’ve just been choking on some water what sailed down the wrong pipe.

Jesus, those dreams are getting more and more fucked up as they ferment in your brain - like the grossest and most nasty white mom box wine in the forgotten cooler at the garden party. God, and the snacks aren’t even _good_. Kathleen went and annihilated the most basic finger sandwich recipe again, and Sandra decided that watermelon was a great substitute for cake.

You keep scratching as you pull yourself out of your desk chair and set to yanking on a new pajama shirt. The one you have on feels stale, and you were getting tired of the godtier jammies anyhow.

And then, _**it**_ happens again.

It’s like there’s something important in the back of your mind.

Something important, life and death in measure.

But you just. Can’t. Remember.

You need to tell someone something.

This time is different, though, and there’s a subject.

Karkat.

Karkat? Why Karkat?

You need to tell _him_ something. But what?

It feels like life or death, almost, stabbing into the back of your skull like an ice pick, and your skin flares up again, continues to itch.

Fuck your dreams, and Rose’s imitation detergent.

The itching stops.

Just like that, cool relief spills over your skin.

The urges end as well, and you can sigh.

Finally.

It must have only been about three minutes, but it took a lot out of you.

Sighing, you drop back into your desk chair.

A chat window has popped up.

It’s a wall of gray text and ridiculously extended metaphors, just like yours, and you lean your head on your hand and just breathe.

There it is, there’s something.

Karkat’s words, however poisonous, make you feel calm. They add a level of reassurance in there, with how much he blusters about how much you disgust him, and how much time he wastes worrying about you.

It’s so silly, and you can tell he doesn’t mean a single bit of it.

And as he draws it on and on, you sigh again.

It feels safe.

Karkat helps you feel safe.

With his hand on your shoulder the other day, gentle and warm.

Or his fingers brushing your wrist when you were corralled into doing dishes together.

Or his smile, small and soft and genuine, when you finally tell a joke he likes.

He always lets you take the seat closer to the wall, and he always bristles and stands up for you when Vriska gives you a hard time, and he is always _there_.

His teeth have been getting stupidly big lately, as well as his feet and hands. He says it’s shitty, but sometimes the molt happens in different parts of a young troll’s body before others. You can’t wait for the hilarity of an upward growth spurt. Kan says that Karkat’s blood type is making him have his secondary molt sooner than hers. She’ll be in a few years or maybe even a decade.

Karkat’s troll skin is peeling a bit, and whatever is underneath it is soft and amazing to touch. His hands have passed the worst of it, and it’s wild seeing where the texture ends at his wrist segment.

 

CG: DAVE?

 

Your next breath fills your tired lungs.

It feels like you were meant to be on this meteor together, in some way, shape or form.

But that’s just lame, isn’t it?

It’s not like fate exists in this shitty universe.

 

CG: I KNOW YOU’RE ONLINE, YOU MIGHT AS WELL ANSWER ME.

 

You will.

And hey, maybe if he invites you over for another movie night, he’ll hold your hand again.

Maybe if you’re really lucky, he’ll take it in both his hands. Soft hands.

Awkwardly big, soft, warm hands.

God he’s cute.

Maybe he would kiss it?

The thought has your face flaring up.

The daydream surprises you, and you wonder where it first came from, anyway. It feels like you’re trying to remember something, and you just don’t know what. Like it’s familiar, somehow. Like the thought of touching his lips _belongs_ there.

And you feel a tear prick in your eye.

You missed him.

The nap must have only been a couple hours. But you missed him like crazy. Like it’s been a lifetime. And while you were asleep, too.

It’s more than a little gay.

But… holding hands again.

That would be nice.

That would be really nice.

 

 

CG: I SWEAR, DAVE.

TG: yeah yeah i know

TG: ill be there in a couple shakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope everyone had a wonderful time reading! Thank you for all of your comments and support along the way, and I hope everyone has an excellent week ahead of them. <3
> 
> Just had to add a little more of something else, and I'll hopefully see you all soon! 
> 
> feel free to follow me or come to ask any questions at my tumblr, royalrastafariannaynays dot tumblr dot com! 
> 
> love yall! <3<3<3

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys! hope you like my new thing! this is something ive been wanting to write for awhile and i had a really legitimately good time with it so i hope you do as well! I have it all written, it just needs some generous editing and beta-ing for the last few chapters. This is a short one, at five chapters right now, and i hope yall enjoy it! <3 have a wonderful day! <3


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